Saturday was a fun day spent at The Fly Fishing Show in Somerset NJ. I met up with a lot of friends, sat in on some interesting seminars and enjoyed an awesome vendor trade floor. There was so much stuff going on it reminded me of being on Penns Creek on a late May evening with about three different hatches happening all at the same time.

The trip started at the Letort in Carlisle early Saturday morning. No we were not actually fishing, but caught up with some forum members I really admire Dave “Fishidiot” and Josh “3wt7x”. I enjoyed and appreciated a leisurely bus ride setup by the guys from the Cumberland Valley TU.

Once there we scouted the trade show floor. It was a great set-up with over 250 vendors, a couple of casting areas and a small casting pond. As you can imagine the usual suspects were there with Sage, Scott, St. Croix and many other traditional product vendors throughout the trade show floor.

A variety of fly shops from the region had booths offering what seemed to be a lot of very good deals. I enjoyed catching up with a Chris and Tony at TCO Fly Shop. They had a rather large well-stocked setup. Jonas from The Feathered Hook was good to see and had me laughing.

Jumped over to the hotel side of the event where all the seminars were being held. I stopped in on Jim and Ernie from Laurel Highlands Guide Services where they shared a very good seminar on the Yough. Bryan Kelly from Kelly's White Fly Shop started the afternoon with a knock out presentation about smallmouth fishing on the Potomac. Both seminars have me ready to hit some bigger water this year.

There was a good crew of PaFlyFish members including: Fishidiot, Gfen, Pcray1234, 3wt7x, Heritage Angler, Tim Murphy, Rolf and Wetfly. Plenty of other events and seminars that were too numerous to see in the one day I was there.

We had nice trip back with on the bus with the CVTU crew that included a dinner stop at Cabela’s with just one more chance to drain any cash that was left in my wallet.

Great show put on by Chuck Furimsky and staff. Definitely one fly-fishing event you should not miss.

Yet another fun and wonderful year for all the anglers who participate here at PaFlyFish. I have assembled a slide show of pictures that have been posted on the site over the past year. With over 1,000 pictures to look over it was fun to throw this together.

With events like the Spring Jam, Fly Swaps, the Steelhead Jam, and fly-fishing clinics it has been a great year. A special thanks to Pad, Jack and Maurice who moderate the forum and provide much needed leadership on the site. We all really appreciate and enjoy those that contribute to the site and our fly fishing community.

After a wonderful year of fly fishing and a equally exciting photography contest I am proud to share the availability of the 2010 Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Calendar. As announced last week, the top three winners and the eight honorable mentions from the photography contest are part of the calendar.

A lot of time by Maurice, Jack and Pad in helping with the judging was much appreciated as well.

Really a fun year and I know the calendar will be something everyone will enjoy on their wall at home, office or fly tying man cave. The calendars can be found at the new PaFlyFish on-line product store with a couple additional items to the calendar for this year.

The power of photography is a wonderful way we capture and share our perspective for fly-fishing. Those images are moments in our life we see forever. This year has been an especially fun and exciting year for sharing those memories.

We’re proud to recognize the winners of the first Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Photography contest. We announced the contest in July. Many wonderful pictures were entered over the summer and into the fall.

Our first place award goes to Tom Frank for his photograph "Early Morning Rise in Paradise.” Tom lives in Bellefonte and spends a lot of time in his neighboring stream of Spring Creek. The photograph was taken as he found himself on one foggy summer morning in the Paradise Meadow. Tom explained that as the fog began to clear and sun started to peak the trout were rising every so often. The one soft riseform captures the essence while keeping the balance of the reflections in the water. Tom’s picture can be found here.

The first annual Erie Steelhead JAM was a huge success! We had a great turnout with people from all across the state. A special thanks to Folly’s campground for their hospitality in the usage of their facilities!

In an attempt in not embarrassing myself in not remembering everyone’s names, I will not give a list of everyone who showed up. We had an estimated 25 guys (and one spouse!) came to fish the famous steelhead alley in Erie Pennsylvania over the weekend of October 30th to November 1st. A few members filtered in on Friday and braved the wind and the rain, but the majority of people showed up on Saturday morning.

We all met at the pavilion at Folly’s and planned our attack from there. Elk is about 50 yards away from the pavilion so it was the logical choice as the water was rising by the minute. A few headed down to the mouth of Elk to “beat the flows”. The fishing did not last very long as the creek visibly rose in front of our eyes. A few people got stuck on the wrong side of the stream and some of us watched in anticipation as they slowly crossed the creek. Those of us who were there then joined up the genius “beat the flow” guys and had a small window of fishing before the flows hit the mouth. Our early morning success was very limited as there were a few hookups and maybe 1 or 2 fish landed.

Most entomologist and anglers would agree that trout feed most of the time under water and mastery of nymphing can be a very productive.

Czech Nymphing has been discussed for a while, but recently brought to my attention by Ken Sperry over at Fly Fishing Reporter about this European style of fly fishing. The biggest difference in this method of nymphing is using up to four nymphs 18" to 24" inches off a dropper rig. Very similar to the often used tandem dry fly and emerger rigs used here.

Presentation is very similar to our high sticking a nine foot rod with an an arm outstretched with a very short drift. Strike indicators are often a part of a set-up.

These weighted nymphs are tied with gammarus hooks, lead wires and traditional natural and synthetic materials. Imitations are based on freshwater scud, larvae or swanky coloring in size #10-#12 hooks. Local nymph imitations with some Czech style modifactions would work best. The video below by Johan Klingberg demonstrates tying a proper Czech nymph.